In Arizona, the state Democrats are denying challenger Democrats access to information.
A state Democratic Party official denied access to a voter list to two candidates in the U.S. Congressional District 3 race, saying they aren’t Democrat enough.
Amanda Aguirre and Manny Arreguin, who are challenging Rep. Raúl Grijalva in the primary, requested voter lists, which are used for getting and verifying petition signatures and targeting campaign mail.
Grijalva’s communications director, Adam Sarvana, said the distribution of the voter list is a state party’s decision and Grijalva had nothing to do with his opponents being cut off.
State party Executive Director Luis Heredia said the party is being more selective about who gets access to the proprietary list. “We reserve that right,” he said.
Heredia said he questions why the two are running against a Democratic incumbent who has been endorsed by President Obama.
“We have reason to believe these candidacies are not truly reflective of our Democratic infrastructure,” he said.
Aguirre has received campaign contributions from Republicans, and Arreguin recently switched parties, he said.
Party switchers are bad? You don’t grow by subtraction, you know.
In Arkansas, the national Democrats are going the way of North Korea.
After a poll released this week showed President Barack Obama only beating his Democratic primary opponent John Wolfe Jr. by seven points, 45 percent to 38 percent, in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District, state Democrats moved to practically disenfranchise Arkansas voters. “[D]elegates Wolfe might claim won’t be recognized at the national convention,” national party officials are telling state Democrats. Wolfe is being accused of not following the party rules.
“They want a coronation,” Wolfe tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “They’re conflating [Obama] with the party. Are we supposed to call him ‘Dear Leader’? Is this some kind of North Korea thing?”
Wolfe insists he’s done the due diligence to qualify for delegates and that the state party is making decisions ad hoc to get the results they desire. “This is ridiculous,” he says. “These guys are trying to tamp down voter enthusiasm.”
If he’s denied delegates he’s rightfully won, Wolfe says, Democrats would be effectively disenfranchising those who chose him over President Obama. And if that happens, he’ll take his own party to court.
Meanwhile, Texas Democrats this year will do what they’ve always done. On May 29 they’ll have a pretend primary where people get to vote, and then they’ll have a caucus where party bosses can fix whatever the people get wrong. That’s how Obama got out of Texas in 2008 with more delegates than Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that she won the popular vote among Democratic primary voters.
If Democrats will cheat against each other — and they will, frequently and ruthlessly — it’s far from unreasonable to suspect that they will also cheat against Republicans.
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